We have confronted this question often
and thought of doing some research on available data and bring this NOT SO
OBVIOUS inference in front you.
For years, whenever someone asked us if
testers are required to write code, we’ve always responded: “Of course not.” or
“Absolutely not” something on those lines.Not anymore. Test automation by its
very nature involves programming activity. Anyone who is asked to do automate
testing should know how to program. But not all testers are doing test
automation or are required to do automation.
Whether you are a manual tester or an
automation tester, you bring an extremely valuable set of skills like critical
thinking, analytical, investigative and attention to detail. Most testers understand
risk, have a good understanding of testing principles and possess some measure
of technical skills whether it be tech support, system administration, database
development, database administration, networking or even programming, etc. Some
of the very best testers in the current market cannot read through a simple
code.
Increasingly, we’ve been seeing,
hearing and learning from various sources that testers are expected to know how
to write code which has made us curious to find out if there is a shift in the
market trend.
Do testers really have to know programming to be relevant and to get ahead?
The following is a synopsis of what we
found based on ads posted online on various job sites. We wish to state that
this data is not scientific or is it based on any specific research technique.
This exercise is only to make a point about the changing industry trends and
bring your attention to it. We certainly hope you appreciate this effort.
We surveyed a total of 500+ job ads
seeking Software Testers or QA or Test Analyst or Tester across Canada starting
with June 2014 until now. We relied on Workopolis, Monster, Indeed and some
lesser known sites for data and did our best not to count job ads twice.
A) Toronto and its
surrounding areas still account for a very high percentage in the job openings
close to 40%. Other big markets include Calgary, Vancouver, and Montreal. About
20% of the jobs available are in smaller markets like Halifax, Edmonton,
Winnipeg and other small towns/cities spread across Canada.
B) Out of 500+ job ads reviewed,
approximately 400 jobs ads had language related to programming irrespective of
the language. That figure stands at 80%
C) There were about 200+
job ads specifically for test automation requiring experience in programming
language/s. In some cases, they even preferred Developers interested in moving
into testing.
D) 60% of the job ads
specifically listed the programming languages. Not in any specific order but
here’s a compilation of frequently asked skills:
- SQL or relational database skills (90%)- Core Java and/or J2EE (50%)
- C/C++ (30%)
- JavaScript (20%)
- .NET or VB.NET or ASP.NET (10%)
- Perl or Python or C# or C/C++ or Ruby (5%)
The job ads also mentioned all sorts of
things whether you’d consider that to be programming or not like SQL scripting,
shell/batch scripting etc. About 60% of the job ads specifically listed the
programming languages.
The bottom line: It is now clear from approximately
80% of the job ads you’d find if searching for jobs in Software QA or Test require
programming skills.
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Irrespective of what we think, the data
suggests that anyone who is serious about a “Career in Software Testing” would do themselves a big favour by
learning at least one programming language. We’d bet on Java for now followed
by .Net.
So which programming languages should
you pick up? Here are the top mentioned programming languages (including both
required and nice-to-haves):
This data makes it very obvious that at
a very minimum, professional testers need to know SQL.
In addition, there were other
requirements/technical skills that aren’t really programming languages but that
caught our attention and we think it is worth mentioning here:
- About 25% of the ads mentioned XML
- About 25% of the ads we reviewed mentioned general web development
skills like HTTP/HTTPS, HTML, CSS, and
XPATH
- About 10% of the ads mentioned Web Services or referenced
SOAP and XSL/XSLT
A Glance at Test Automation Tools vis-à-vis
the Job market: We also looked
simultaneously at what skills specific to test automation tools are required.
No surprise there we guess: The top test automation tools were:
§ Selenium (80%)
§ QTP/UFT (10%)
§ JUnit, NUnit, Jmeter, TestNG, LoadRunner (About 5%)
§ SilkTest & SilkPerformer (Less than 1%)
§ Visual Studio/TFS (Less than 1%)
Not to mention some other lesser known
and used tools. We figure if you know any one of the above, you can easily
learn these as well. .
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First and foremost, the number one requested tool is open
source. Overall, of the number of test
automation tool mentions, more than half are for free or open source tools. This
market shift was well underway starting 2008 timeframe and has only exploded
thereafter with big companies moving towards or embracing open source tools. Selenium
is the clear winner in this round and we expect this trend to continue for the
next few years at least unless a another ground breaking tool comes along which
combines all the benefits/features into one or closed source tool developers
make it open source or go web based. We are pretty sure the big boys among tool
developers are taking notice of this market trend.
A glance at what the market is paying: Few jobs had pay ranges in the $15-$20/hr range. About 30%
of the jobs which had payscale mentioned in the ad itself ranged from $45K/year
at the low end to $60 K/year at the high end requiring anywhere in between 1-3
years of experience or paid $25-$35 per/hr on contract. Also majority of the
jobs were full time or contract to hire versus just a few years ago when we saw
an equal split in terms of Contract and FTE. We did not have enough data to draw
real conclusions related to salary other than what you might expect or from our
own sources meaning trainees who we have helped place over the last 4-5 years.
Jobs in major cities tend to pay more and majority of the jobs required less
than 5 years of experience.
Does that mean the more experience you have the harder it
may be to find a suitable role?? We’d
venture a guess and say “YES” unless you are skilled in automation or bring to
the table a skillset that is hard to find like customer interfacing, top notch
communication skills, people management, certifications or prior experience
within the same domain even if it not testing related.
A little summary for you: No doubt the market has tightened and requires more skills
than before. The good side is there are more opportunities than before. Smaller
organizations are realizing Testing to be an independent function and starting
to build QA teams. Smaller organizations require their hires to be agile,
learn new technologies fast and most importantly contribute in more ways than
one. It now takes a multitude of things to secure yourself in this changing
market.
